The Sad Death Of Picking Stocks

All this week, CNBC has
been interviewing fund managers from the Morningstar conference,
and of course they all have this or that rationale for buying
this or that stock. Some like commodities. Some like consumer
durables. Some like defense plays. Some thing stocks are cheap.
Some thing stocks have "gotten ahead of themselves."

And on and on it goes.

But it's actually a big lie.
This hasn't been a "stock-picker's market" in a long time,
and there's a reason why everyone is trying to brush up on the
meaning of the bid-to-cover ratio (Wikipedia
explanation) at a government bond auction. We're pretty sure
we never once heard the term on CNBC before three months ago. Now
we hear it all the time. (And it coincides of course with the
rise of Rick Santelli.)

Bottom line is, it's all about the government now, which is, of
course, the predictable result of transferring so much of the
private sector liabilities over to the public sector. When it
appears that the Fed is in control, we're good. When it looks as
though DC has lost the plot, then it's freak-out time for stocks.

Hopefully, the crisis will abate and the government will be able
to extricate itself from business, and at that point it might be
a stock-picker's market again. But in the meantime, all these
Five-Star Morningstar fund managers are just fooling themselves.